Empowering: How Teams Can Level Up Faster
During Groupon’s hyper-growth phase, we formed internal tools product teams. The vast majority of our exploding headcount was in sales, merchandising, account management, editorial and customer support. Their “processes” involved gut feel, post it notes, and a lot of copying and pasting between systems. It was manual, time intensive, error prone, and untrackable.
Since our product, design and engineering team was not experts on the operations we were supporting, we had to initially defer to other subject matter experts for direction. So the entire team invested time in shadowing their internal customers, understanding their goals, seeing how they worked, clarifying the problems to solve and defining how we would measure progress.
Within a few months our CEO was getting asked about how those teams made so much progress so fast. A developer built an interactive merchant ROI calculator in his own time. It wasn’t even in the backlog, but it solved a core problem we uncovered during shadowing. Another time I heard a spontaneous cheer from the Editorial team. A bug was fixed – one I didn’t even know about. We had measurable outcomes for each department, and made rapid improvement to those.
These tools and corresponding process changes eventually were rolled out globally. They accelerated revenue, improved merchant satisfaction and literally saved us thousands of headcount.
I was definitely not micromanaging the team that achieved these things. Most of the initiative and credit goes to them.
If you missed parts one and two, they covered why empowerment stalls and the role of management in empowering teams. Creating the conditions is not enough. Teams have to earn the continued trust and take ownership of their area.
This post is about what they can do. Many of these things don’t need to wait for permission. Anyone can get started.
Forming
Becoming an empowered team follows the same stages of development as any team. A team needs to form before they can achieve great things. Make the most of this opportunity by laying a strong foundation.
Work as a Team
If your leadership has done their job, they assembled a dedicated cross-functional team. This isn’t just a set of stations in a feature factory. You have different skills and perspectives, but should develop a shared purpose.
Lean on each other. Time spent debating together yields better decisions, shared context and strong ownership. It’s better to have a team member question your idea and make it better than to have an obvious hole poked in an idea by your VP.
Have retrospectives early and often. No team is perfect on day one, but you’ll improve faster by discussing this openly.
Hold each other accountable, and make each other stronger. You succeed or fail together.
Lean Into Your Charter
Your managers gave you a new mission. If this isn’t clear, take ownership. Ask questions. Refine it and validate it with your manager. Once it is, focus on your mission.
Odds are, this initially was very general. It may have been a single phrase or vague problem statement, perhaps with a few representative feature ideas. You need to make it actionable. Some things that are very helpful for that:
Establish key metrics. Define how you will measure progress towards your charter. Your main goal is your key outcome. Break that down into the most important drivers, and then product metrics which are your leading indicators. Learn how here.
Map your opportunity space. Whether this is an opportunity solution tree or another approach, log potential areas to prioritize. Do this in a structured way to start clarifying the system you will improve and how various parts relate to each other.
Stick to your area. This team was formed for a reason. At least initially, assume that there are big opportunities within your new charter. Be open to ideas within this area, and push back on things outside of this area. Focus will be important to progress.
Expect these to evolve – rapidly at first. The charter given to you is a starting point. Your job is to make it real and develop a plan.
Have a Beginner’s Mindset
“The only way to influence a more senior stakeholder is to bring new information to the table.”
Chances are, you are not an expert in this new area. Not yet. This has to change.
While your manager has experience and a 10,000 foot view of things, you need to provide the details. As Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale put it, “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” You need to build expertise so you can bring the data.
Treat this as an opportunity to dive deep into your domain and get up to speed. Even if you have prior related experience, a fresh look is informative. Look at this from multiple angles:
Your manager. They formed this team for a reason. They want to give you more ownership. Ask a lot of questions to learn everything that isn’t written down.
Stakeholders. Build a relationship with your partners. Don’t just ask for their feature ideas, but interview them about the pain points and opportunities behind those. Find common ground on problems to solve.
Customers. Your product is ultimately for people who use it. Don’t assume you know what they want. Customer research should be a core to how the entire team works and makes decisions — now and always. Every interview or study should develop empathy.
Product. If there is an existing product or process, learn the ins and outs. Set it up. Use it. Understand the technology. Note what works and what doesn’t. Read customer reviews, support tickets and Reddit forums. Look for themes.
Your advantage here is a combination of fresh eyes and specialization to go deeper than anyone else. Your credibility depends on becoming an expert.
Storming, Norming & Performing
Forming sets the foundation. Execution sustains momentum.
Ask for Help
Don’t mistake leadership’s trust for full autonomy. They are accountable for your success and want to help. You may even encounter obstacles and need help navigating those.
Be specific about what you need. This can be brainstorming, a framework, or getting extra feedback. Highlight whatever you need to unblock progress or build confidence and point you in the right direction.
If they are getting too involved, you can also ask for a bit of room. Agree on general parameters for alignment and how you will bring them along. Tell them what you will share and by when. That gives them clarity while letting you do more.
Good managers are there to help. Let them.
Build Responsibly
What you build and how you build both matter. You can lower risk, increase trust and get better results by following these practices:
Start with informed hypotheses. Ground your plans in discovery, customer research and product data. Document the case for what you are doing and what you expect to happen.
Build iteratively. Incremental changes contain risk and accelerate learning. Even when you have big plans, break those into smaller steps. Dream big. Start small.
Release responsibly. A bold change need not be reckless. Launch with a pilot, A/B test, or otherwise contain the blast radius. If there is an issue, or even if the result is mixed, you have reduced the downside.
Evaluate and learn. Most changes can be reversed if needed. After you launch, assess, and iterate. This lets you course correct – and get better results.
Responsible execution enables bold ambitions.
Transparency Breeds Trust
Make it comfortable for your leader to step back. Help them monitor your work without needing to be in the details. Some ways to do this:
Track goals not activities. If your goals are on track, they can rest easy. If they can monitor key metrics, they can focus on trends. Where there are risks or exceptions, pull them in early to help mitigate.
Embrace reviews. Use regular checkpoints to bring them up to speed on key milestones, learnings and results. Seek input before finalizing important decisions. Highlight asks that would increase your success. They can be your partners and allies in getting more done.
Feedback is a gift. When they share suggestions or ask questions, take those as a signal for what is important to them. It’s a chance to learn, improve and respond. Take it seriously, follow up, and use it to get better. They are here to help you succeed.
Bringing your manager along earns autonomy.
Empowerment can be built gradually and deliberately, by leaders creating conditions and teams earning trust. With good harmony between those involved, it happens note by note.
I help product teams get better results. Let’s discuss your situation and how to approach this process. Schedule time.
